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FeaturePoll1

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Vote for the feature YOU would like to see included!

Note: Developers do not read this page regularly. This is intended as a place for users to discuss features. If you intend to reach the developers,

Also, this is not the place to report bugs. Again, use the LyX bug tracker for that.

You can vote for an existing feature request by adding your name (preceeded by treble star***) below the feature. You can also request an entirely new feature (preceeded with single star*, and double star** for sub categories), with the sole limitation your imagination.

This is the first of two pages of feature requests. The pages are:

  • FeaturePoll1 - tools, citing, tables, graphics/preview, math, inline elements, editing
  • FeaturePoll2 - packages, layouts, saving, exporting, output, LaTeX, navigating, installers, look, misc

Note that:

Table of contents (hide)

  1.   1.  Tools
    1.   1.1  Spellchecker
    2.   1.2  Find and Replace
    3.   1.3  Statistics
    4.   1.4  Change Tracking/Document Comparison/Revision Control
    5.   1.5  Date Preferences
    6.   1.6  Formatting Tools
  2.   2.  Citing, Referencing and the Lot
    1.   2.1  Citing
    2.   2.2  Cross-referencing
    3.   2.3  Glossary
    4.   2.4  Index
  3.   3.  Tables
  4.   4.  Graphics/Instant Preview
  5.   5.  Math
  6.   6.  Inline elements (Notes, Branches etc.)
  7.   7.  Editing
    1.   7.1  Text input
    2.   7.2  Document management
    3.   7.3  Work area
    4.   7.4  Selection
    5.   7.5  Text formatting
    6.   7.6  Document Properties

1.  Tools

1.1  Spellchecker

  • Spell Checker Dialog
    • "Change All" option→implemented in LyX 2.0
      • Helge Hafting
      • Sam Lewis
      • Günter Milde
      • Alex Vaughn
    • Spelling language indication on pane (See bug 2208)→implemented in LyX 2.0
      • Georg Baum
      • Martin A. Hansen
      • Helge Hafting
      • Hellmut Weber
      • Liviu Andronic
    • Dock widget or even intext popup widget for spellchecker (See bug 2266)→LyX 2.0 features a dock widget
      • Sam Lewis
      • Uwe Stöhr
      • Felipe Morales
      • Helge Hafting
      • Emme Ci
  • Spell Checking Workflow
    • Ability to edit while spellchecking (see bug 2529). I often find unrelated errors during a spellchecking session. But if I fix them, spellcheck have to start over from the beginning. It'd be nice to simply continue from the position where it stopped last time.
      →fixed in LyX 2.0
      • Helge Hafting
      • Uwe Stöhr
      • Jean-Pierre Chrétien
      • Alex Vaughn
    • Continuous spell checking, as you write with wavy underlining (See bug 718)→implemented in LyX 2.0
      • John C. McCabe-Dansted (Yes, not only useful to liberal arts writers...)
      • Benjamin Kellermann
      • Gabriel many
      • Scott Otterson
      • Kirk McDonald (even liberal arts writers should be supported))
      • Marco Rossi
      • Alain Lifchitz
      • Ran Rutenberg
      • Martin Kalling
      • Prakash Manandhar
      • Sylvain Reboux
      • Matthias Gorges (writing in Word and copying it into LyX isn't that great!)
      • Sam Lewis (supposedly increases spelling learn capacity)
      • Francois Beaubert
      • Paul Hines (This method is faster for long documents because one does not need to repeatedly ignore the same set of abbreviations or foreign names. It takes me 20 min to check my thesis as is.)
      • Tim Michelsen
      • Christopher Reeve (As said, saves time with documents containing abbreviations and technical words)
      • Dominik Waßenhoven
      • Reiner Wainhold
      • Erez Yerushalmi
      • Liviu Andronic
      • Peter Buxton
      • Rafael Melo
      • Peter Baumgartner
      • Spyros Kotoulas
      • Silvo
      • Alex Vaughn
    • Turn-off option for spell checking comments or notes (See bug 1509)→implemented in LyX 2.0
      • Gabriel Many
      • Sylvain Reboux
      • Andreas Neustifter
      • Sam Lewis
      • Hellmut Weber
      • Liviu Andronic
      • Benny
      • Alex Vaughn
    • Allowing sections not to be spellchecked (see bug 1042).→implemented in LyX 2.4
    This is very useful for computer code, acronyms etc., no more "click click click..." to skip through all these while spellchecking. Also useful with the continous spellcheck mentioned below.
    • Helge Hafting
    • Arkadiusz Danilecki
    • Liviu Andronic
    • Alex Vaughn
    • implementing a grammar check tool A possibility would be to re-work on the partial implementation of the languagetool (http://www.languagetool.org) software and integrate it as a standard lyx tool. This feature would allow Lyx to compete with the other state of the art WYSIWYG editor like MS Word.
      • Pascal
      • Paul
      • Alex Vaughn
      • Arcadi

1.2  Find and Replace

  • Find and replace dialog
    • Dock widget for Find and Replace
      → implemented in for LyX 2.0 by Tommaso Cucinotta (see also this overview and bugs 3998 2625)
      • Emme Ci
      • Sam Lewis
      • Michael Reed
      • Andreas K.
      • Helge Hafting
      • Günter Milde
      • Alex Vaughn
  • Find and replace workflow
    • 'Find and replace source text&lt;&lt;E?.g. Able to search for \index{density, able to replace McCabe with M\textsuperscript{c}Cabe etc. Also Unicode regexes. (See bug 3998).
      → Preliminary work done for LyX 2.0, see this overview
      • John C. McCabe-Dansted
      • Kirk McDonald
      • Edward Cherlin
      • Sylvain Reboux
      • Tim Michelsen
      • Helge Hafting
      • Rudi Gaelzer
      • Hellmut Weber
      • Tomasz Kołodziejski
    • Wrap-Around Search, so you don't have to search backwards and forwards to finally find what you're looking for.
      → This is also done in advanced search in LyX 2.0.
      • Jack Desert
      • Aurélien Gentils
    • Highlight all matches, not just the current one (with a different color for the current one compared to the others) like VIM, Emacs and Opera.
      • Jim Oldfield
      • Kevin Brubeck Unhammer
      • Rudi Gaelzer
      • Gilad Parann

1.3  Statistics

  • (Word) counting
    • Include character counting (useful for PNAS). → new in 1.5.4
      • Alex Vaughn
      • Some One
    • An ignore-wordcounting-notes option → new in LyX 1.6.4: notes and inactive branches content will not be counted.
      • Sam Lewis
      • Piero Faustini
    • Word counting in the main document should count all words in the main document and in all subdocuments.

1.4  Change Tracking/Document Comparison/Revision Control

  • Change Tracking (new in LyX 1.4)
    • Show/Hide changes on screen (LyX Workarea)
      for working on long documents it is very confusing always having all deleted text still there especially when lots of changes are made. so it would be great to have an option that would show only the final output on the screen
      • Jan D. Hauck
      • Peter Coles
      • Eckhard Großmann
      • Kai-Martin Knaak
  • Comparing documents (see 3469) →implemented in LyX 2.0
  • Revision Control
    • using SVN instead of/additional to RCS → SVN is supported.
    • (Better) version control for windows (I've tried all sorts of way of getting RCS installed on windows (which worked, but lyx can't seem to work with) → lyx should work correctly with rcs as of version 1.6.0 --ps
    • Ryan Cross - (v 1.4)
    • CVS support, with ability to diff a file against other revisions of that file. It would also be nice to be able to include the CVS revision history into the document itself ( ->autogenerated changelog).
      • Jeremy Stashluk
    • Mercurial support. Mercurial is a distributed revision control written in Python. It would be nice if it is available in lyx out of the box.
      • Alvin Sebastian
      • Anton Hughes
      • Vincenzo Mantova
      • Will Furnass
      • Danya Alexeyevsky
      • Jonathan Johnsson
      • Guy Arie
      • J. Criswell. MUCH more intuitive to use for simple cases than Git; and a top tier decentralized RCS.
    • Git support. Git is a distributed version control system.
      →Basic git support has been implemented to LyX 2.1
      • Jakub Narebski
      • Vincenzo Mantova
      • Robert J. Berger
      • Danya Alexeyevsky
      • Dmitry S***sky
      • Alex Vaughn
    • More sophisticated diff/merge integration. For example, when you, e.g., "git merge", my lyx files get turned into diff3 merge format. Lyx should automatically detect the change and represent the result as a 3-way merge (or at least a 2-way merge, a la the Tools-Compare function).
      • Jackson Loper

version control

1.5  Date Preferences

  • Lyx should provide a drop-down menu list of common Date formats from which a user may choose. The user shouldn't have to supply a date format code -- e.g., %x, etc. The drop-down menu should display example date formats like modern wordprocessors.→ implemented in LyX 2.4
    • Bruce Bigby (bbigby@rochester.rr.com)
    • Liviu Andronic

1.6  Formatting Tools

  • colour and appearance of inserted horizontal lines → implemented in LyX 2.0
    • LyX should provide a simple right-mouse-button-menue to change thickness and colour (and maybe even the style) of inserted formatting horizontal lines.

2.  Citing, Referencing and the Lot

2.1  Citing

  • Packages and commands
    • Support the biblatex package→Implemented in LyX 2.3
      Biblatex is a mature and active development. It is able to replace all three rudimentary (or unmaintained) citation packages with an advanced, powerful package. Native support with a simple and easy-to-use gui for configuring biblatex would be a great advantage; it would reposition LyX in terms of citation and bibliography management as a powerful, up-to-date scientific writing tool.
      • Jürgen Spitzmüller
      • Dominik Waßenhoven
      • Maximilian Wollner
      • Gregor Hochschild
      • Piero Faustini
      • Peter Baumgartner
      • Luca Niccoli
      • 'Manveru'
      • Jan D. Hauck
      • Liviu Andronic
      • Timo Tiuraniemi
      • 'Manveru'
      • Benny
      • Matthew_T.
      • Jan Knaup
      • Alex Vaughn
      • Sam Lewis
      • Andreas Rosenblad
      • Riccardo Buscicchio
    • Customize \cite.→Implemented in LyX 2.3 (in form of "citation engines")
      In preferences, a user-generated-list of possible variants of the \citet (\citep, \Citet, \nocite etc.), which should then be chosen from a selection box in the citation dialogue. This would be even more useful once biblatex is supported, since with it it's far easier to define custom citation stiles in the preamble. Just having the possibility to select them from the citation dialog would be enough (without the "citation preview" as of now)
      • Piero Faustini
      • Luca Niccoli
      • Jan Knaup
      • Alex Vaughn
    • Extended natbib support (i.e. superscript citation style, sort&amp;compress, force round brackets)→Implemented in LyX 2.3 (via "Options" input widget)
      • Martijn Brouwer
      • Henrik Nilsen Omma
      • Kirk McDonald
      • Tim Michelsen
      • Gregor Hochschild
      • Michael Spiegel
      • Liviu Andronic
      • Alex Vaughn
  • Citation workflow
    • Check for hanging citations. It would be nice for Lyx to warn you of citations that you have not in your bibtex databases but still have cross-references referring to them. It's a pain to search through the document looking for the cross-refs. Perhaps it could be added to the new Labels&Reference Navigator. (Edit: Make them a different color, e.g. red, would also help a lot)→Fixed in LyX 2.4.
      • Jorge Moraleda
      • Jan D. Hauck
      • Benny
      • Anton Fetisov
      • Alex Vaughn
    • Change all function. --- In cases where the Bibtex key has changed in the Bib-file it would be cool to have a function in lyx that updates all bibtexkeys referring to the same entry.
      • Jan D. Hauck
      • Benny
      • Anton Fetisov
      • Jan Knaup
      • Alex Vaughn
    • Citation format --- It would be great to have more options regarding the format of citations in the text, especially one like "(Author Year)". Currently, only "(Author, Year)" is possible.
      This works with natbib
      • Thomas Cerny
  • User Interface
  • Really easy and slick BibTeX Frontend build into LyX
    →This is very unlikely to happen. A bibliography tool (also a simple one) is a rather complex application, and there are countless applications available that do better than a homebrewn one ever could.
    However, in LyX 1.6, you can directly open included BibTeX databases via a context menu on BibTeX references. LyX will automatically detect an installed BibTeX editor, such as Jabref or Pybliographic. Also, 1.6 has improved support for searching, etc., references.
    • Kirk McDonald
    • Andrew Loch (JabRef has a nice interface, but is too slow)
    • Martijn Brouwer. Not necessary: checkout pybliographic
    • Ekkehart Schlicht. It would be just cool if it were possible to add new bibliographic items through the citation insert window right away into the Bibtex database used by the document.
    • Gabriel Many
    • Jacob Floyd - I would love to see environment-like bibliography entries, ie: appliying bibliography-book to a book entry would format it correctly in the output, and bibliography-author to the author, bib-section to the section, etc. I can never remember the conventions in bibliographies (emphasize, quote...) so something where I can just tell the app (in this case LyX) what the reference is, and let it format it (WYSIWYM) would be great.
    • John Ward
    • Stefan Statuner - Perhaps some help in working with Endnote (import direct the Endnote format)
    • Ran Gilad-Bachrach
    • Rudi Gaelzer
    • Alex Vaughn
  • Support with built-in bibliography tool for only showing references that are cited. (If it is to be, it should be optional. Refs are often included just for the sake of it)
    • Gabriel Many
    • Alex Vaughn
  • Zotero integration for citing (bug 6300). Zotero is a very popular open source bibliography manager which especially is good at capturing references directly from the Web. It would be nice to have a kind of LyXPipe installed, so that you could transfer the reference directly to your LyX File (Similar the JabRef function).
    → Not a LyX issue proper; however, the new firefox plugin LyZ addresses these issues.
    • Marc Levivier
    • Peter Baumgartner
    • Ingo Bormuth
    • Mikko Rönkkö
    • There is Lytero, which works through a pipe and should work now also on Windows. It is however not maintained and does seem to be working out of the box (at least on Windows) (Petr Šimon)

Citations

2.2  Cross-referencing

  • Workflow
    • Chapter Contents . Rather than one huge contents, the ability to generate a chapter contents at the start, plus a more detailed contents page at the start of each chapter. (Or a contents for any stated span of pages). It would make navigation a lot easier for large documents.
  • Workflow
    • Automatic cross reference labels. The writer should not need to insert a label to cross-reference section 3.6.1. LyX should offer all numbered entities in the cross reference dialog and auto-generate latex labels as needed. The explicitly inserted label is only for cases where the reference isn't to the start of the section, so that it might go on a different page than the heading.
      • Helge Hafting
      • Steven Webb
      • Rudi Gaelzer
      • Fred Nugen
      • Sylvain Reboux
      • Spyros Kotoulas
      • Jorge Moraleda
      • Benny
      • One More (March 2010)
      • John Gillanders
      • Yann Disser
      • David Rosenberg
      • Alex Vaughn
      • Elisabeth Eckstädt
      • Oscar Ruitt
Oh? Then what is the convention for naming such labels? The idea is to refer to things by stable names, not compile-time counters, right?
  • Richard Smith
  • Robert Siemer
Instead of just seeing a list of existing labels, you also see the navigator with the outline, list of figures, list of ..., etc. When you do not select an established label, but pick something like "Figure 2" or "Section 12", you have to fill out a label name textbox. It is like the four following steps in on: you write and want to refer to something 1) go there 2) put a label 3) go back... search, search, here? Where? Ah, here I was... 4) insert the label. New: one unified step: 1) insert a reference and put a label at the destination if there is none.
  • Easier generation of Cross-references, e.g. right clicking a label could give you a menu &quot;Add &lt;reference&gt; to clipboard|Add &lt;page&gt; to clipboard|...&quot;, and then you could add a cross-reference just by pasting. → new in 1.6.2
    • John C. McCabe-Dansted
    • Kirk McDonald
    • Marco Rossi
    • Tim Michelsen
  • Check for hanging cross-references. It would be nice for LyX to warn you of labels that you have removed but still have cross-references referring to them. It's a pain to search through the document looking for the cross-refs.
    → New in 1.6 as part of the new Labels&Reference Navigator
    • Mark Pearson
    • Alex Vaughn
  • User Interface
    • Better sorting of labels in the cross-reference dialog. I would like to have them sorted by name (part of the label following the prefix such as "fig:") or by type (prefix such as "fig:" or "sec:"). I would also like to be able to type into this dialog to fast-search for the label I need. When editing a very large document, the current interface is unwieldy.
      →implemented in LyX 2.0
      • Chris Barrington-Leigh
      • Benny
      • Mark Horton
  • Extensions
    • Crossreferences to unrelated documents. The package xr allows cross references into other documents that are not part of the same child-master document tree. I.e. "See chapter 2, page 4 in my other report."
      • Helge Hafting
      • Rudi Gaelzer (I've been using/asking this for ages...)
      • Benny
      • Alex Vaughn
      • Sebastien Pierard
      • Benjamin Laugraud -> Note: this is also useful when compiling a child document independently.
      • Marco Petterson
    • Support package nameref. We can then typeset the name of the entity being referenced. See bug 3221. → implemented for LyX 2.0
      • Helge Hafting
      • Jonathan Wadelius
    • Support package hyperref. Nice for PDF's. → new in 1.6
      • Helge Hafting
    • Support package cleveref. Other supported packages, such as prettyref or refstyle, produce latex code that is more difficult to import back to lyx, and is more problematic for co-authors who do not use lyx. See ticket #11637.
      • Or Meir
      • Kees Zeelenberg

Cross-referencing

2.3  Glossary

  • Built in Glossary support (maybe for glotex?)
    *** Glossary support (nomencl package) has been added for 1.5
  • additional support for multiple glossaries (package glossaries): This would be a nice feature to simplify the creation of large scientific scripts with different categories of nomenclatures/glossaries (e.g. latin symbols, greek symbols, abbreviations and so on.

2.4  Index

  • Tool for helping inserting and editing labels of index of contents. When using a lot of index labels (for example, people names in a History or Literature article), would be very fine to have even a simple autocompletion tool or a menu, but best thing would be to use conventional labels and then associate once for all occurrencies a output text for each different label. For example: "BARD" label -> output in index "Shakespeare, Williams (1564--1616)" with correct bold, italics and so on, and save a huge amount of time.
    → As of LyX 2.4.0, you can use the outliner (context menu) to re-insert existing insets to other places of the document
    • Piero Faustini

3.  Tables

  • More table editing features, such as dashed lines and cell shading.
    • Steffen Tacke
    • Kirk McDonald
    • Gabriel Many
    • Luiz Souza
    • Ran Rutenberg
    • Sylvain Reboux
    • Liviu Andronic
    • Tim Huegerich
    • Alex Vaughn
    • Simon Adlem
  • Better WYSIWYM Table Environmnent Handling: Declare paragraph environments for contents of cells (e.g. standard, itemize, enumerate, comment...). Create table Environments to declare a cell/row/column a repeating or non-repeating header and automatically format the table in the output as such with some kind of default style or other, so that I don't have to think about formating the tables.
    • Jacob Floyd
    • Kirk McDonald
    • Gabriel Many
    • Sylvain Reboux
    • John Flood
    • Benny
    • Espen Myklebust
    • Tim Huegerich
    • Simon Adlem
  • Improve WYSIWYM Table Handling: Make multi-row table cells easier. It should be possible to say that a cell should or should not be wrapped when output. It should be easier to add multi-line content to cells. Automatically wrapping cells to fit on screen or on a page is a separate issue.→Fixed in LyX 2.4 (if I understood the request correctly)
    • Jacob Floyd
    • Scott Otterson
    • Sylvain Reboux
    • Tomasz Kołodziejski
    • Ivo Pavlík
    • Benny
    • Alex Vaughn
    • Simon Adlem
  • Improve WYSIWYM Table Handling: Auto wrap cells creating multi-line cells to make the table fit on one screen. The table should also be able to auto-wrap the contents of cells to make the table fit the width of a single page. Large tables are very unwieldy and hard to edit in LyX because it requires a great deal of horizontal scrolling.
    • Jacob Floyd
    • Kirk McDonald
    • Gabriel Many
    • Sylvain Reboux
    • John Flood
    • Gretchen Imahori
    • Benny
    • Alex Vaughn
    • Kevin Lipscomb
    • Simon Adlem
  • Simplify Tabular Data Reordering implement a way to move data (cell(s)) via drag-n-drop. Also, moving rows up and down with M+Up and M+Down (as described for enumerated/itemized lists in another feature request) would be very beneficial.
    • Jacob Floyd
    • Tim Michelsen
    • Benny
  • MS Excel-like method for multi column data import, either by paste, or by CSV file.
    → LyX 1.5.4 and 1.6 can import CSV files
    • Scott Otterson
    • Tim Michelsen
    • Keith Burdis
    • Alex Vaughn
  • Use whatever Latex hack is necessary for Word/Excel setting of alignment on a row/column or even cell by cell basis. Here's the difficulty I'm having with trying to have bottom aligned column headers and the rest of the table being top-aligned: "How can I bottom justify a table header, and top justify the rest in Lyx? - TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange". There are, implicit in this, a few more enhancement suggestions: allow <Ctrl-Enter> line returns to be entered above column titles; and never use the `\center` code for paragraph centering, globally, since it adds unneeded, non-optional whitespace after the paragraph; which we could just add if wanted anyway. Instead, use "\centering". Alternately, it could be a separate choice. Is there anybody who would prefer the way column and row justification is currently handled, after reading that post?
    • J. Criswell
  • Allow the changing of row and column border widths; and making them single, double or triple line.
    • J. Criswell

4.  Graphics/Instant Preview

  • Simple Grafik-editor.Vector based
    → rather unlikely; this is a job for external applications
    .
    • Frank Petitjean
    • Gustav Schweitzer
    • Jim Oldfield - PGF/TikZ would be a good backend for this. Why do it in LyX? Since then text labels could be LyX insets with usual editing capabilities (especially math). Also it would avoid having a separate file for each graphic, since the data could be inline in the .lyx file.
    • Klaus Bauer - Would make Lyx the best note taking software I'd know.
  • Just inlude Ipe (http://tclab.kaist.ac.kr/ipe/ a simple vector based Grafik-editor) into LyX. Ipe can export .eps and .pdf and supports LaTeX code in the drawing.
    • Gustav Schweitzer
    • Waluyo Adi Siswanto
    • Johan Ingvast
    • Riccardo Buscicchio
  • A better way of inserting floating figures than FloatFlt. → LyX 1.5.4 uses wrapfig instead.
    • Yann Disser
    • Scott Otterson
    • Gabriel Many
    • Graeme Morrison
  • Paste graphic from clipboard: prompt for filename/location (but have reasonable defaults to allow things to go quickly), save clipboard picture, and include into the lyx document at the cursor location. (Motivation: I take notes in LyX during mathematical lectures, and I often want to include figures. With a tablet PC, it's quite easy to get the figure into the computer in real-time, but there are many steps to get that figure into LyX -- it's difficult to do it in real-time. How can that process be streamlined? May also help to allow graphics to be stored within the LyX file, so the user doesn't have to bother coming up with path/filename for each figure?)
    → New in 1.6
    • David Rosenberg
    • Ran Rutenberg
    • Thomas Winkler
    • Andrew Frank
    • Christopher Reeve
    • Iliya Kuznetsov
    • Sasha Gutfraind
    • Alex Vaughn
  • Support for PGF/TikZ or Asymptote preview. Note: Instant preview insets work with PGF/TikZ in Lyx 2.0.
    • Sylvain Reboux
    • Francois Beaubert
    • Frank Petitjean
    • Florian Huber
    • David Roberts
    • Peter Foldiak
    • Benny
  • In the image float there should be a checkbox to insert the property '\centering' without using ERT → Implemented in Lyx 2.4.
    • Stefano
    • L.M.Tran
  • A native support for importing matplotlib graphics code, meaning an inset with required python environment to add the code. The preview and output will be handled by matplotlib.
    • Alex Vergara

5.  Math

  • Include support for siunitx package which allows the use of SI Units symbols
    • Pascal
    • Riccardo Buscicchio
    • Matthew Krupcale
    • J. Ch.
    • R. F.
    • Yoav N.
    • L.M.Tran
  • Double space to enter math mode. Just like a space exiting the math mode, a space after an existing space in text could enter the math mode, making typing smoother. Repeated spaces are currently not allowed and hence the key combination is dormant. Could also be made optional through Preferences. Scientific Workplace has this feature. It makes writing text with a lot of inline math (such as variable names) much easier. The variable name is simply preceded and followed by a double space.
    • Jonas Björnerstedt
    • Peter Harremoës
    • Stefan W
  • Subequations (starting with LyX 2.3.0, there is a subequations module).
    • Martijn Brouwer
    • Alysson Ferrari
    • Uwe Stöhr
    • Kirk McDonald
    • Luiz Souza
    • Rudi Gaelzer
    • Sylvain Reboux
    • Sander Nijdam
    • Espen Myklebust
    • Alex Vaughn
    • Matthew Krupcale
  • Easier inputting of mathematical symbols, as in TeXmacs. For example, instead of typing \alpha or choosing alpha from a math panel, you can hit 'a' and press TAB to loop through the variants in-place. Need a \subset or \prec? Hit '&lt;' and press TAB a couple of times. Also, to make it clearer, enter =&gt; and see \implies, &lt;=&gt; and see \iff, and so on. → 1.6 has an auto-completion feature for this
    • John C. McCabe-Dansted
    • Vincenzo Ciancia
    • Kirk McDonald
    • Martin Forsgren
    • Sonja Mauerstein
    • Sylvain Reboux
    • Jan Verfl
    • Frank Denz
    • Alex Vaughn
    • David Hugh-Jones
  • Support for commutative diagrams&lt;&lt;These? seem to be pretty fundamental. The XY-pic latex package has lots of capabilities and seems to be pretty standard. Obviously not everything needs to be included. But it would be nice if support for matrix style diagrams was included, with a dialog for customizing arrows. → since LyX 1.6.0 XY-pic is fully supported, see the LyX Math manual. LyX 2.0 will also support Feynman diagrams
    • Justin Noel
    • Travis Schedler
    • Masoud Kamgarpour
    • Hans Peter Gumm
    • Vincenzo Ciancia
    • Edward Carter
    • Rudi Gaelzer
    • Avon Athens
    • Alex Vaughn
  • Math search and replace. E.g. able to replace &#036;\alpha&#036; with &#036;\beta&#036; throughout the document without going into the LyX source code.
    → possible with the Advanced Search feature that is implemented for LyX 2.0.
    • Chris Barrington-Leigh
    • Kirk McDonald (important!)
    • Martin Forsgren
    • Luiz Souza
    • Andrej Bona
    • Greg Meymaris
    • Sylvain Reboux
    • Joel Calev
    • Rudi Gaelzer
    • Frédéric Faure
    • Ehtibar Dzhafarov (very important!)
    • Carlos Florentino
  • Support for amsmath big Big bigg Bigg delimiters. Right now, the left and right delimiters are very nice because they're very easy to insert using keystrokes, and they look great on screen. Unfortunately, these left/right delimiters are actually more difficult to read when printed. I think things like \bigl( and \bigr) should show up as delimiters of the appropriate sizes. It would be really nice if the \left and \right delimiters could be [optionally] converted to \big -style delimiters during the conversion to latex, so that nested delimiters would always grow in size, but so user doesn't have to think about which of the big,bigg,Big,Bigg to use for each pair.
    • David Rosenberg
    • Kirk McDonald
    • Fred Nugen
  • Preview for single equations. I don't use math preview because the math inset is easier to check, and because it slows down Lyx considerably on my machine. Still I would check individual equations occasionally, and it would be good to have a way to switch on math preview for a selected equation.
    • Ekkehart Schlicht
    • Anton Fetisov
    • Alex Vaughn
  • The ability to define new mathematical functions. AMSMath has the \DeclareMathOperator command, but the usual suspects (sin, cos, etc.) seem to be hardcoded into ControlMath.C. There also seems to be a specification on how they appear in the symbols file. [DR: And/Or \operatorname and \operatornamewithlimits ? I think argmin and argmax are fairly common operators not in the standard collection.]
    → This is possible with math macros (Insert->Math->Macro), introduced in 1.6.0. e.g. for an argmin macro, put "argmin" in the first box, put "\operatornamewithlimits{arg\,min}" (\operatornamewithlimits will just look like ERT) in the second box, and optionally in the third box put "\textrm{arg min}" (I normally use mathrm but textrm lets us put the space in; this is just for display in LyX anyway). --Jim Oldfield
    • Rónán Daly
    • David Rosenberg
    • Thomas Coffee
    • Leandro Mattioli
    • Raffaele De Feo
    • Alex Vaughn
    • Fred Nugen
    • Robert Haussen
  • Add a button to launch the math panel, or even better provide an option so that the math panel is in a separate pane whilst editing an equation. It's annoying having to go to the end of the insert/math menu to get to the math panel. Even if one knows most of the Latex macros, occasionally one needs a more obscure symbol available in the panel.
    →In 1.5.0, there's no more math panel, but a math panel toolbar that can be enabled by a button on the math toolbar or pops up automatically when in math.
    • Matthew Bromberg
    • Abdelrazak Younes (but you can also right-click inside an equation to get the math panel)
  • User math panel (see bug 2622) to enhance math macro usability: in short, a graphical cache where to store math constructs and retrieve them later in the document or in another one. It could be much tidier than inserting the same set of macros in the beginning of each documents (builtins don't cover all needs). Perhaps some menu option to define new default macros?
    • Jean-Pierre Chrétien
    • Anton Fetisov
    • Alexander Shamov
  • Implementation of CAS (Computer Algebra Software) interfaces. It's the ability to communicate with external systems in shell-like sessions, making it possible to evaluate commands or mathematical operations of an external CAS system and then display the results in a graphical way. This has been implemented in TeXmacs for some time already. By allowing to evaluate the whole document again, it would be possible to program in LyX (like in MathCad). --> Isn't this already implemented? LyX supports Maxima, Octave, Mathematica, Maple. To use, insert an equation, then Edit > Math > Use CAS. No, it is not the same. We request to evaluate the entire document as a whole from top to bottom in a MathCad like mode.
    • Rudi Gaelzer
    • Matthias Diehl
    • Martijn Brouwer
    • Spinu Vitalie
    • Charles Reid
    • Gustav Schweitzer
    • Waluyo Adi Siswanto
    • Lasse Nielsen
    • Alex Vaughn
    • Antonio Serrano
    • Oscar Ruitt
  • Extension of the implementation of CAS (Computer Algebra Software). It would be great if LyX would offer the opportunity to communicate with more computer algebra software like Mathcad and Matlab. It would also improve the handling with this tool by providing a simple button in the math toolbar.
  • Ctrl+left/right arrow, which in text moves back/forward in whole words, could move back forward in mathematical terms (i.e. to the next relation such as =,<,etc or binary operator such as +,- etc, without going inside any insets such as scripts). At the moment to navigate around an equation by keyboard you really only have the option to go to the start/end of the equation or one character at a time, which is tedious. Note that Shift-left/right arrow selects a whole fraction or parenthesis in one step, so in these cases Ctrl-arrow is simply to do the same, moving the cursor rather than extending the selection.
    • Jim Oldfield
    • Aurélien Gentils (that is a great idea)
    • Anton Fetisov
    • Jonas Björnerstedt
  • ctrl-m toggle: when you type text select it and do ctrl-m the math tex codes are recognised and generate a nice equation, it would be nice when pressed ctr-m again it would come back as tex(t) code. This can be implemented very simple I think : the function should copy the equation==tex code, display it as normal text or somewere were you can edit in, then, when done, select entire tex equation and press ctrl-m again. This should greatly augment the productivity. implementation is something like select, ctr-X, del, ctr-V, edit, select, ctr-m. A rmb option can be added with equations, 'edit as tex'. Thanks for all the good work
  • Edit math commands after "LyX blue maths" is generated/previewed. Say one writes \omega to get an ω. After hitting space or entering a new "\" the "blue maths" will be previewed. But if later you wish change the ω into an Ω (\Omega) it would be nice to be able to just change the "o" into "O" without having to delete the blue preview and write the new command. Especially when dealing with macros with (multiple) arguments this would be a nice feature. Hitting, say, F2 (as when renaming files in Windows) when the marker is right behind the previewed symbol could be a way activate editing. This is perhaps up the same street as the ctrl-m toggle above, but it does not imply exiting math mode, just going from blue preview to "brown code".
    • Espen Myklebust
    • Daniel Clément
  • I'm often writing in Russian, so I have to switch language each time I enter or exit math mode. In math papers that's done a lot, so that really slows down, unnerves and is the source of errors. That's the same for any non-latin character set. Perhaps Lyx could auto-switch the language to English when entering math mode and revert it back on exit. Non-latin characters are extremely seldom used in LaTeX math, so English alone would be enough as default math typing language.
    • Anton Fetisov
    • Martin Re

6.  Inline elements (Notes, Branches etc.)

  • Notes
    • more notes insets different/more types with different colours. also, would be nice to highlight text fragments in that way. or generalise notes into user-configurable "shows up in output" or "hidden”.
      • Oscar Ruitt
    • Insert->TODO item which is like a LyX note but shows up as a "List of TODOs" in the outline drop-down list. This could be achieved by generalizing LyX notes to support tagging - zero or more tags could be assigned to any note and a dockable toolbar could provide search facilities on these tags. In this scenario, the user could use "TODO" as a tag. → LyX 2.2 introduces a TODO and FIXME module for that very purpose
      • Manoj Rajagopalan
      • Oscar Ruitt
  • Branches
    • Option to let active branches add to the exported filename. Example: Export a test as "test.pdf". Enable the "answers" branch, export again and get "test-answers.pdf" This avoids renaming files outside of LyX. See also bug #6048
      →implemented in LyX 2.0
      • Helge Hafting
    • Option to share/copy branches between documents. Useful for multi-file documents.→implemented in LyX 2.0
      • Some One
    • Multiple and/or conditional branches
      • It would be great to have multiple "choose-which-one" branches: i.e. a group of branches in which one can be (in docs settings) selected as the activated one. This could be useful in a lot of environments where you may have more than 1 kind of content. E.g. for multiple-language manuals/slides etc: you can always switch between english, gemrnan or italian, as you already properly defined them.
      • Even greater would be "conditional" branches, based on preamble settings or some other automated switch: in the former example, the system could check the doc default language and activate the right branch. Of course, multiple branches could be conditional as well.
        • Piero Faustini
  • Info Insets
    • Insert the document filename. When printing, this thing resolves to the name (and optionally path) of the LyX file. Very useful for "Our ref:".
      → New in 1.6 as InsetInfo. One can also insert menu, shortcut etc.
      • Helge Hafting
      • Rudi Gaelzer
      • Hellmut Weber
    • Insert the last modification date of the document. When printing, this thing resolves to the date the LyX file was last modified (rather than the date it is printed, which is rather misleading). Very useful for printing a copy of a document long after it was written and distributed.→Implemented in LyX 2.4!
      • Axel Stammler
      • Silvo
      • Liviu Andronic
  • Non-math macros. In LaTeX I define all kinds of short-hand for commonly-used or frequently-changed text or, for instance, for uses like customising the way references are shown, or for simultaneously putting a word into the text and into the index, etc, etc. These \newcommand{} definitions are one of the wonderful things about LaTeX. I especially made use of them in my last thesis. But LyX turns them all into ERT. The implementation of math macros is very nice. Why not make non-math macros available, too?
    • Chris Barrington-Leigh
  • LilyPond-book integration (or MusixTeX's musixflx double-pass integration)
    • Piero Faustini
  • Inset Workflow
    • Quick use of insets
      • Typing a backslash starts an ERT inset with a backslash already typed in.
      • Typing another backslash removes the ERT inset and ends up with a single backslash in text
      • Typing a dollar sign starts inline math, typing two starts display math
      • Whatever else you can think in this direction - but all of it only optional, switched on/off in program preferences
      • Jan Verfl
      • Hellmut Weber
      • Conor Houghton (perhaps ^$ and ^$$ so $ still means dollar)
      • Benny
  • Floats should be sized onto page (for instance they could be only 50% page wide (and the outside text flows side by side
    • Stefano
    • Oscar Ruitt

7.  Editing

7.1  Text input

  • Unicode input, to bring support for more scripts and thus more languages.
    Done in 1.5
  • Word completion → new in 1.6
    • As it happens with Open Office Writer, the possibility of memorizing the words that were used in the last edited documents and automatically present them as an option when typing the first characters of similar words. When this option is activated, the software builds a table (with a previously set maximum number of elements) with the last used words that are lengthier than a ``minimum word length'' option also previously set. If the typist begins to type a word that has the same root than one that exists in that table, the software presents it as an option (either as a tool tip or just finishing the word in a different color) that the typist may or may not accept by pressing a previously chosen key (usually the tab or the space key). This is a feature that indeed accelerates and eases the typing work.
      • Roberto Gorjão
    • The automatic presentation of completable words is not my favour. I recommend presentation by keystroke. (like vim)
      • Tobias Strauß
  • More standardised default keyboard shortcuts: ctrl-return is newpage-insert, shift-return is newline-insert.
    • Yes this is changable, but trivial defaults like this should be similar to what New Converts are used to.
      • Kevin Brubeck Unhammer
  • Entering an \item and then clicking return twice should exit the \itemize environment →Implemented in LyX 2.0
    • currently, clicking return ten times makes it go no further
      • Kevin Brubeck Unhammer

7.2  Document management

  • A document management feature for multi-document projects like master or ph.d. thesis. This would mean, having multiple documents open at one time and to have something like a tab-browsing menu for switching quickly between them. → Implemented in 1.5
  • Automatic branch generation from lists. What I have in mind is, say, refactoring of tests or exercises: it would be nice to have a master LyX document of problems in a particular subject, and to be able to check/uncheck items in that list for output using an appropriate widget. For example: this semester, I might prepare exercise X in course Y by using items 1, 2, 6 and 9 from my list of exercises compiled over the last few years and adding 2 new exercises to the list. This can be expanded in other directions - allow generic categorization, create random tests and so on. I realize LyX is not a database or content management system, but I have a feeling this would be useful to many people who need to make similar documents often (lawyers making standard contracts with slight variations, anyone writing bills or quotations - there are probably many other examples...).
    • Guy Cohen
  • Layout for editing and processing ReSTructured text markup format. ReSTructured markup language supports basic formatting, tables, lists, latex formulas, images etc. and can be processed to html, chm, latex, pdf etc. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReStructuredText, http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html, http://sphinx.pocoo.org/ A lyx to rst converter already exists https://github.com/drufat/spexy/blob/master/spexy/command/rst.py
    • Jean-Baptiste Lamy (Jiba)
    • Alessio Miozzi
    • Emme Ci (muzzle)

7.3  Work area

  • Split-window view (See bug 2143) → new in 1.6
    • Angus Leeming
    • Uwe Stöhr
    • Rudi Gaelzer
    • Tuomas Airaksinen
  • Better tab control (closing/ managing tabs on tab panel) → New in 1.6.
    • Sam Lewis
  • Remember last window positioning
    LyX always seems to open a document with the same window size and without remembering you had the TOC open on the right. Would be nice if it remembered how the doc was last time and opened it in that same view. → Implemented in 1.5
  • The ability to change the margins of the display on the screen. It's nice to run the window maximized to accomodate a long toolbar with less loss of horizontal screen space, but I'd like to be able to have the text I am working on more centered. (Especially on a widescreen display.) Partially implemented (only for fullscreen view) in LyX 2.1.
    • M.B.
    • Rahul Gupta
    • Ole Jørgen Brønner
    • Benny
    • Jonathan (This would result in increased readability, and therefore make it easier to write good text)
    • Fredrik R
    • Olof
    • Mia W
    • Jesús López
    • Willis Monroe (The fullscreen option is great, but would also like this to be configurable in the normal window)
    • Eloi Torrents
  • While writing text I have a habit of marking text with highlights, font colour, formatting etc., with absolutely NO intention of a printed output, but as editing reminders, to retouch or rewrite the text in a certain way at a later point (In MSword, if I did not use the review feature, then I have to go back and manually remove them, upon completion of their purpose, before a print). A systematic scheme to change on screen display of text to allow Self Review of text/content, not affecting the output will be much appriciated. (Even in Word review is aimed at peer, not self review)
    • Rahul Gupta
    • (I definitely support this idea. Sure, output should be clean but for creative writing I need visual markups and I miss them very much in Lyx. I would even go one step further and allow - maybe with the help of a check box or module in the preferences - on-screen-only insertion of empty lines. I use this in in latex to visually distinguish parts of the text and clustering them according to my needs. Subsections don't do this job because I don't want this subtle structuring to appear in the outline nor do I want to be forced to name the clusters of text fragments) Benny
    • Mikael Kardell
    • Oscar Ruitt
  • An option to turn off the "paste-by-middle-button" feature. I too often discover unwanted pieces of text on spurious places as a result of scrolling though the text (whereby the wheel - acting as the midle button - gets sometimes pushed). I realy hope that none of them has remained in the final version, but it is very difficult and annoying to check. →Implemented in LyX 2.2.
    • Jan Verfl
    • Jim Oldfield - or just remove completely on Windows, where this isn't appropriate - middle button means "begin a long scroll"
    • Harry Coules - yes, it should be off by default on Windows.
    • Matt Gingerich
  • A little clickable triangle (or something else if developers prefer) in front of every chapter/section/subsection/subsubsection/paragraph/subparagraph. The idea is that when this graphical element is clicked, the contents of the corresponding part of the document either collapses or expands (i.e. is shown or is hidden). It would be perfect if this could also work with slides in beamer. As a similar feature exists for notes and floats, I think this could be implemented. In a second time, the information about the state (shown/hidden) could be written in the lyx file for the next time the document will be opened. I think this feature would be very useful for people working in very long documents, even if using sub-documents is another way of working. Child documents can be inserted for conveniently managing long document
    • Sebastien Pierard
    • Oscar Ruitt This is a GREAT idea—enormously helpful. A little like a simple outliner feature.
    • Stefan W - yes, pleeeeeaaaaaase!
    • Rasmus K.R. - <3! Branches work, but long text in inset boxes is not neat.

7.4  Selection

  • Select drag and drop within a document. Right now its select cut and paste.
    • Ran Rutenberg
    • Sylvain Reboux
    • Francois Beaubert
    • Johannes Knaus
    • Benny
    • Matthias H.
    • Matthew Wilcoxson
    • Peter Raupach: drag and drop would speed up major formula manipulation dramatically. This is input from someone who generally has NO preference for mouse action. Not to forget: holding CTRL (for example) while dragging should preferrably lead to copy action
    • Oscar Ruitt

7.5  Text formatting

  • Support for strike-through text formating →implemented in LyX 2.0
    • ps
  • Change Language button for configured languages
    • Currently, when marking spans of text as belonging to a particular language, the user must select from tens of languages. Presumably, Lyx users do not converse in _every_ language on the planet. There should be an option for the user to select his commonly-used languages, and a toolbar button for toggling which of these languages are applied to a selection.
      • Dotan Cohen
      • Gabriel Many (Yes, I use the apply font button, but it would be nice to limit the list)
      • LyX 2.0 provides direct menu access to all currently used languages. This is not exactly what is requested here, but should do for most cases.
  • Reset Text Style Button so that customized text styles can be reset with one click instead of 7 to 15 clicks. →Implemented in LyX 2.4!
    • Liviu Andronic
    • Benny
    • (you know you can do that already by Alt+C+<space>?)
  • LFUN to insert LyX code similar to the self-insert function, but it inserts a string argument directly into the LyX (source) file. If the LFUN is called lyx-insert then "lyx-insert \textgreek{a}" would insert an alpha, and it would be bindable to, say, “M-c g a”.
    • Espen Myklebust

LFUN Customization

7.6  Document Properties

  • Simple way to edit footers and headers from within a document. → implementd in LyX 2.0 via a layout module
    • Currently, the only way I have found to make use of headers and footers have been ERT. It would be a great addition for people without LaTeX knowledge. Right now, on 1.6 you can choose from a menu the use of ``fancyhdr'', but you can't customize without resorting to editing the preamble or ERT. For the user could be like adding a footnote, that would be aplied from then on.
    • (See Bug #2535)
      • Esteban Kuber
      • Liviu Andronic
  • Overrideable counters. Any counter (section number, enumeration, etc.) could be overrideable. Move the cursor into one, it turns editable the same way as math does, the user can then change the number explicitly when needed. (See Bug #12010)
    • Helge Hafting
    • Rudi Gaelzer
    • Hellmut Weber
    • Liviu Andronic
    • Benny
    • Simeon Krastnikov

Please Note, no preference is indicated by the order of the categories.

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